As gardeners, if we’re not complaining about drought we’re moaning about rain. But at the Chelsea on a rainy May day, the moaning only lasts a short while, so beautiful are the gardens. And who doesn’t want to pose with an umbrella beside a tower of flowers?

It was even more special because our London-based eldest son Doug, rear, and his partner Tommy were our guests – Chelsea novices who really enjoyed wandering the show.  In fact, the last time we attended the Chelsea was in 1992 when Doug was at Cambridge; thirty-two years later it was even more spectacular.

The rain was on-and-off but the crowds were thick around the show gardens, so I missed a few, including, alas, the Gold Winner – but there was lots to see on the 66-acre site including smaller garden installations and some 500 booths and exhibits, many under cover in the Great Pavilion.

Exhibitors like The Plant School from Northamptonshire, below, take special care, naturally, to design their booth around beautiful plants.

I loved this display from The Delphinium Society offering good ideas for plants to pair with delphiniums.

Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden for the National Garden Scheme was a cool, romantic, woodland-edge vision in white. According to the designer, the garden exemplified the “joy and associated health and wellbeing benefits of garden visiting that have been at the heart of the National Garden Scheme since 1927.” It was part of the project ‘Giving Back’ and following the show was slated to be relocated to a hospital in Cambridge where it will be sited at a Maggie’s Centre for people having treatment for cancer. The shed in the background was designed by architect Ben Stuart-Smith, Tom’s son, and created by woodworker Fenton Scott-Fielder.  Many of the plants were donated by National Garden Scheme owners. The white azalea is Rhododendron ‘Daviesii’.

The Octavia Hill Garden celebrated the social reformer and co-founder of the National Trust in 1894, Octavia Hill (1838-1912) who worked throughout her life to improve urban housing (she was the landlord of 3,000 tenancies) and protect green space. Interestingly it was Hill who coined the term “the green belt”, intending it to mean green space for the use of people, rather than a purely environmental concept. The Chelsea garden was designed by Ann-Marie Powell Gardens for garden centre retail group Blue Diamond and the National Trust and won a Silver-Gilt medal.  It was conceptualized as “a community urban wildlife garden” occupying “a series of open-air sitting rooms” in an urban brownfield and featured a warm-colour plant palette that was enhanced by the ochre-hued sandstone hardscape.  The sound of splashing water could be heard…. above the Chelsea rain.

Someone beside me asked what the spherical yellow flowers were and I said Craspedia or “billy buttons”, an excellent flower for arrangements and for drying.

The National Autistic Society Garden by Sophie Parmenter and Dido Milne tells the story of “autistic masking”. It was designed as an environment in which ‘masking’ – a conscious and subconscious coping strategy for dealing with a loud, overwhelming world – becomes possible, a way for autistic people to experience the beauty and sound of nature comfortably but fully. These candelabra primulas were in the garden’s ‘mossy dell’.

This video explains more about the Silver-Gilt-winning garden.

Designer Robert Myers called the garden below ‘St. James’s Piccadilly: Imagine the World to be Different’.  Reminiscent of the churchyard in the title, it is a contemplative haven set as sanctuary for city-dwellers and wildlife.  It “celebrates the significance of urban ‘pocket parks’ in London and other cities, often connected with historic churchyards, some bearing the scars of wartime bombing yet refusing to yield to destruction.”  The building is a “counselling cabin” like those used by the clergy.  The garden also contains seven species of plants that appeared in the ruins of St. James’s after wartime bombings, reminding visitors of nature’s resilience. Once the Chelsea ends, the plants will find a new home at St. Pancras Euston Road and the counselling cabin and other hardscaping will be installed in the restored garden in Piccadilly.   

The colourful RHS ‘No Adults Allowed Garden’ was designed by kids, for kids – specifically the students of the Sulivan Primary School in Fulham who will help in its transfer to their own school grounds after the show. And naturally, children love carnivorous plants!

The Chelsea Flower Show sponsor The Newt in Somerset (which I blogged about this January after visiting in 2023) commissioned ‘A Roman Garden’ with a formal courtyard filled with flowers and statuary.  Imagined in Pompeii in the 1st century CE, it is a colonnaded courtyard with a peristyle garden featuring 1,600 plants of 13 different varieties with a mulberry in the centre and medicinal plants such as chamomile, lavender, opium poppy and thyme.

Royal Hospital Way flanks the Royal Chelsea Hospital grounds, below. The word “hospital” refers to the ancient definition as an almshouse, rather than a medical facility. Founded in 1682 by King Charles II, it is an Old Soldiers’ retirement and nursing home for 300 veterans of the British Army and is run as an independent charity. Chelsea Pensioners in their ceremonial scarlet uniforms are a fixture at the show, as you’ll see in my next blog.

Gardens along Royal Hospital Way were themed as Sanctuary Gardens. The romantic space below inspired by the television series of the same name was The Bridgerton Garden, designed by Holly Johnson. On opening day, some of the show’s stars were in attendance – or so I read in gossip from Lady Whistledown herself!  And, spoiler alert, the garden is meant to reflect Penelope Featherington, “the central character of Bridgerton season 3 and her journey from being a wallflower to embracing her true self and stepping into the light.”

Who doesn’t love lupines in late May?  They were all over the Chelsea grounds but this variety, Lupinus ‘Masterpiece’ in the Bridgerton Garden, combined with campanulas, foxgloves and irises, captured visitors’ hearts. 

Next up was The Burma Skincare Initiative (BSI) Spirit of Partnership Garden, designed by Helen Olney, which won the Gold Medal in the Sanctuary Gardens.  BSI is a registered charity co-founded by London-based dermatologists, Su Lwin and Chris Griffiths in 2019 with the vision of creating equal access to quality skincare for the people of Myanmar. When Lwin and Griffiths visited the 2021 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, they were impressed by the global publicity that could be achieved for the charity by showcasing its work through the narrative of a Chelsea Garden.  The building at the top is an interpretation of a 14^th century Burmese stupa, representing the challenging environment in which the BSI operates in strife-torn Myanmar.  

My favourite garden came next, ‘MOROTO no IE’ by Kazuyuki Ishihara, a Chelsea Flower Show veteran since 2006 and frequent Gold award-winner.  Born in Nagasaki-city, after he graduated from university, “he started to study the ‘Ikenobo’ style of Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement with a long tradition), and his eyes were opened to the world of flowers. When he was 29, he started selling flowers on the street, inspired by the flower shops of Paris. Through floristry, he built up his artistic talent. In 1995 he created his own company, Kazahana Co. Ltd.”  Japanese maples and moss hummocks created a serene, green setting where the sound of water splashing from the central waterfall seemed to calm the hectic scene that is Chelsea. The Japanese concept of the ‘stroll garden’ was very much in display here – if only I could have jumped the barricade and…. strolled.

As with many Japanese gardens, colour was limited to mainly green, but the Siberian iris ‘Tropic Night’ added a sensuous note to the rocky water garden.

A stunning moss living wall on the garden’s exterior contained just one decorative touch, a small, wild-bee haven.

As I stood admiring it, a visitor asked if I wanted my photo at the moss wall. I said yes, and later thought about what I brought from Canada specifically to wear at the Chelsea, an old April Cornell flowered smock that I’d worn in the March 27, 1994 photo announcing my first garden column in a weekly series I would write for six years for the Toronto Sun. Thirty years? Not bad for a favourite garment.

‘Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees’, but trees do offer sanctuary, as was clear in this garden designed by Baz Grainger of Landform Consultants for wealth management firm Killik & Co. And in a fiduciary play on words, the garden’s ethos was described as “Saving: four oak planters represent our four main drivers to start saving and the oak indicating the importance of choosing a reliable and enduring savings partner, Planning: six structural stone pillars and six steel pergola crossbeams represent six key reasons to plan for the future. Investing: five trees represent five core investment goals.”  

I felt the need to do research on The Freedom from Torture Garden: a Sanctuary for Survivors, a garden designed by John Warland and Emma O’Connell. A charity, Freedom from Torture was established in 1985 as an offshoot of Amnesty International. In 2016, its five centres received 1,066 referrals for individuals from 76 countries including Sri Lanka, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria, DR Congo, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Sudan. Virtually all clients are asylum seekers or refugees who have fled torture and persecution in their home countries. The centres involve horticultural therapy so the garden is a meaningful expression and, as part of the project Giving Back, the garden will be rebuilt at Freedom From Torture Headquarters at Finsbury Park, London.  I was very taken with these organic-shaped willow structures in a dry part of the garden.

A sunken communal seating space will allow survivors to sit together and share stories. In fact, those in FFT’s gardening group told their stories as research for the garden, which will grow edible and medicinal produce for harvest by those in the therapy programs. 

I didn’t get past the crowds to look at the Flood Re Garden, but while gazing through its side panel , I suddenly became aware of a man sitting in the foliage in front of me. He was talking about the power of certain plants to adapt to flooding – and I realized he was on camera. When I asked an attendant nearby, they told me he was James Wong of Gardener’s World, filming a segment for the show.

So it was fun to find the segment at 11:08 on this episode of Gardener’s World at the Chelsea and see what he looked like from the front!  I made a little screen grab below.

The World Child Cancer Nurturing Garden  designed by Giulio Giorgi was the RHS Environmental Innovation Award winner. It featured curvilinear raised beds made from perforated terracotta blocks planted with soft-touch plants, fragrant herbs, vibrant mosses and edible plants.  “Supporting emotional wellbeing, a child and a parent can stroll through the reclaimed brick path, which leads to scenic meadow surrounded by tall trees, perennials, annuals, and shrubs. At its heart lies a seating area, which is a restful place for children and their loved ones”.

The final garden in my collection is the Boodles Garden celebrating the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery. Taking inspiration from paintings at the gallery, it evokes the spirit of many significant artworks. The creative vision for the design takes from artistic elements, including colours, textures and ‘hidden details’ in paintings viewed during visits to the gallery. The sculptural arches are inspired by Canaletto and Claude’s element of repetition and perspective; water features define the space while reflecting the work of Renoir, Monet and Seurat; and the primarily-green garden plantings themselves “represent the artist’s brushstrokes and texture within pointillist and impressionist paintings”.

My great regret was missing the Gold Award-winning Water-Aid Garden by Tom Massey and Je Ahn celebrating rainwater harvesting. This video gives a sense of the designers’ intent.

My next blog will focus on the Chelsea Flower Show booths and the Grand Pavilion.